Tempus
2008 v 01/02

Tidskriften

The End of The Affair

Like a number of hot emerging markets, South Africa's made
great progress in recent yearsbut its leadership is faltering
dangerously.

By Scott Johnson
NEWSWEEK
Updated: 11:04 AM ET Dec 22, 2007
In late November, at a high-levelmeeting of South Africa's ruling
African National Congress (ANC), a senior strategist named Joel
Netshitenzhe delivered a blistering assessment of the state of
his country. In a confidential document, Netshitenzhe warned that
crime had become a "scourge," HIV was exacting a "devastating"
toll, income equality was worsening and millions of South Africans
remained mired in poverty.

True, in the 13 years since the country emerged peacefully
from the grip of apartheidone of the most inspiring episodes
of the 1990sits government had boosted the economy, turning
it into an attractive emerging market; promoted racial reconciliation;
prevented massive brain drain and helped rebuild this deeply scarred
society. But the country nonetheless faces a profound crisis.
"The issues may be uncomfortable to entertain," Netshitenzhe
wrote. "But we cannot avoid dealing with them."

He was right. Many South Africans have started to feel that
their countryrecently an exemplar of democracy and enlightened
leadershipis gradually tilting in the wrong direction. During
the 1990s, the nation's AIDS epidemic was serious but no worse
than that suffered by much of Africa. The same for violent crime.
Today the AIDS crisiswhich kills upwards of 900 South Africans
a dayhas become one of the world's worst. And crime is so
bad that South Africa is starting to resemble Sierra Leone or
Colombia. In fact, the country suffered more violent deaths per
capita in 2007 than Afghanistanthe supposed front line in
the war on terror.

There's a pervading sense, moreover, that the benefits of democracy
have not flowed freely enough. Despite economic growth, income
inequality among blacks, especially, is getting worse. So is corruption.
And President Thabo Mbekiwho is required to step down in
2009has grown increasingly authoritarian. As a result, as
the ANC gathered to pick its next leader (who is virtually guaranteed
to be the next president) in late Decembera contest in which
Mbeki's main rival was his former deputy Jacob Zumamany
here were grappling with a troubling question: has South Africa
fallen prey to the same malaise that has brought down so many
independent African states? "There is a moment when many
African liberation movements stumble," says William Gumede,
a political analyst and author of a forthcoming book on the ANC.
For South Africa, that moment seems to have arrived. "There
is a sense that something uncontrollable is happening," Gumede
says.

The roots of this unease can be traced back to the ANC, which
helped win the country its freedom in 1994 and has governed it
ever since. For generations after its founding in 1912, the ANC
stood out as virtually the only African liberation movement that
was progressive, tolerant of dissent and relatively democratic
and uncorrupt. Today, however, the movement's leading lightsthe
generation that led it from prison cells on Robben Island and
exile in Zambia and Englandare slowly disappearing. Inspirational
figures such as Nelson Mandela and Mac Maharaj have retired, while
others, like Walter Sisulu and Oliver Tambo, have died of old
age. "It is a massive change," says Gumede. "There
is real panic inside the ANC about what is happening in the party
and in South Africa."

No wonder. With the elders' passing, the core values that shaped
half a century of revolutionary struggle are being replaced by
petty politics and personal agendas. Bad management at home has
tarnished the country's image, and the moral high ground the ANC
once enjoyed abroad has been steadily eroded by its baffling tolerance
for oppressive regimes in Zimbabwe, Sudan and Burma. "What
an awful blot on our copybook," Archbishop Desmond Tutu,
a Nobel laureate and outspoken figure in the anti-apartheid struggle,
said recently of the government's treatment of Zimbabwe. "Do
we really care about human rights? Do we care that fellow Africans
are being treated like rubbish, almost worse than they were treated
by rabid racists?"

Increasingly, Pretoria's answer seems to be no. Meanwhile,
corruptionthat African scourgehas grown noticeably
worse. Allegations of profit-making now reach all the way to the
top; though he vehemently denied the charges, the country's chief
cop, Police Commissioner Jackie Selebi, has been tarnished by
a bribery scandal, as have Mbeki and Zuma. "A lot of people
are just absolutely shattered by what the ANC has become,"
says Andrew Feinstein, a former ANC parliamentarian who quit the
party after his corruption probes were shut down and who explored
the graft allegations in a recent book.

But the problems go well beyond the ANC. Consider the economy.
Postliberation South Africa has made great strides: a decade-long
boom has lifted millions out of poverty, and with growth predicted
to hit 5 percent next year, this progress seems set to continue.
Yet according to the World Bank, South Africa now ranks as one
of the world's most unequal societiesand things are getting
worse. Between 1975 and 2005, wealth disparities nearly doubled.
The economic divide between whites and blacks has narrowed, and
"within the black community, there is a group that is better
off than during apartheid," says economist Jac Laubscher.
"But there is an even larger group that's worse off than
before." According to a study conducted last in 2006 by the
Institute for Race Relations, the poorest 10 percent of South
Africans now get the same share of the national income as they
did in 1993, the year before apartheid ended. And the number living
on less than $1 a day has grown from 1.9 million in 1996 to 4.2
million in 2006. "We have got a crisis," says Adam Habib,
deputy vice chancellor of the University of Johannesburg. Indeed,
waves of angry protests calling for better services and greater
opportunities swept the country in 2007.

Also troubling is the crime epidemic. Antony Altbeker, a criminologist
who has spent years studying the fault lines in South African
society, estimates that the country has become one of the world's
five most violent places; it has eight times more murders a day
than the United States (which is nearly seven times its size).
The mayhem isn't limited to the poor: in June, five international
tourist groups were robbed, and thugs ambushed South Africa's
U.N. ambassador. Diplomats from the Ethiopian, French, Gabonese,
Ghanaian, Pakistani and Thai missions have also been assaulted
over the last six months.

Still, it's the marginalized who generally suffer the worst.
The country is now enduring a plague of sexual assaults. "When
victims come into our hospital, we don't even ask if they've been
raped anymore," laments the director of one Cape Town hospital.
"It's always a gang rape now, so we ask how many men they
were raped by." As Altbeker describes the situation, "Violence
[has] entered the DNA of our national culture and has reproduced
itself there." Years of repression, vast inequality and widespread
alcoholism have combined with lack of faith in the government
to produce a deadly state of affairs.

And then there's AIDS, which perhaps best symbolizes the government's
neglectful approach. For Mbeki's entire first term, which lasted
until 2004, the presidentwho has persistently cast doubt
on the link between HIV and AIDSrefused to authorize the
delivery of antiretroviral medication by the public-health system.
Recently, under intense pressure, Pretoria has improved its policies
somewhat, formulating a national action plan that coordinates
the delivery of medicine. But that didn't stop Mbeki from firing
Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge, South Africa's popular and effective
deputy Health minister, last summer, or from renewing his support
for her controversial boss, Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimangwho
has publicly advocated beetroot and African potatoes as a cure
for the disease. No surprise that South Africa now has about 5.5
million people living with HIV (according to the United Nations)
and an adult prevalence rate of 19 percent.

Unfortunately for South Africans, December's leadership battle
offered little hope that things will improve. An Mbeki victory
would allow him to pick his own successor when he steps down as
president in 2009; if Zuma triumphed as expected, however, the
job will go to him. Once Mbeki's prot?g?, Zuma was fired by the
president in June 2005 over corruption charges that remain outstanding.
Yet these haven't hurt Zuma's popularity; nor did an indictment
for rape (he escaped conviction). That's all cause for concern.
Mbeki's tenure has been problematic, but Zuma is a poorly educated
populist who many critics fear will drag down South Africa's economy
and further hurt its image (this is a man who once famously brushed
off concerns about AIDS transmission by saying he took a cold
shower after having sex with an HIV-positive woman).

Zuma's backers say he's been unfairly maligned, and that he
couldn't make drastic changes even if he wanted to, as he will
be hemmed in by the party apparatus. Others are optimistic that
all the tumult could lead to improvements. Ayanda Dlodlo, who
heads a group of liberation-era ANC veterans, says that the country's
downward spiral has inspired the surviving graybeards to re-engage.
"The sense of sacrifice is still there," she says. "All
the veterans have is the ANC, and they would be loath to see South
Africa degenerate into a basket case."

Indeed, veterans' groups have already begun reactivating their
cellsonly this time in the interests of civil society. Old
party members have advocated establishing "street committees,"
much like those used during the anti-apartheid struggle, to help
police against crime. Similar measures are being discussed to
attack AIDS, corruption and poverty. Meanwhile, according to the
political analyst Gumede, the specter of Zimbabwe's implosion
could serve as a cautionary lesson for South Africa's leaders.

Should they commit to turning the country around, South Africa
has huge advantages over its neighbors, such as an educated population,
a relatively good infrastructure and clear civilian control of
the military. In recent months, moreover, the government has extended
grants to thousands of the poor to help close the income gap.
Still, South Africa's leaders must focus their efforts on actually
governing if things are to improve. For too long, politicians
here have failed to take on the boring but critical work of running
the country, says ANC veteran Maharaj. Even the wish that the
elders would return and take charge is a way of avoiding "responsibility
for the problems of today," he says. Still, the old struggles
are over, he argues; good government must now become the ANC's
focus. That's something South Africa's old leaders clearly understood.
Let's hope their heirs finally get the message.